This document relates to information management.
As the Internet has grown, online advertising has become a popular method by which advertisers can reach consumers. Online advertising provides opportunities for advertisers to target their advertisements to a receptive audience. Advertisements can be identified by one or more content servers in response to queries and listed on a content page provided by a publisher.
A publisher that lists the advertisement on the publisher's content page can charge the advertiser each time a user interacts with (e.g., clicks on) the advertisement on the content page (e.g., and is directed to a website associated with the advertiser). If, however, the user contacts the advertiser by calling a telephone number specific to the advertiser listed on the content page with the advertisement instead of clicking on the advertisement, the publisher may not have a readily verifiable way of charging the advertiser because the publisher may have no knowledge of the telephone call to the advertiser by the user.
Additionally, an advertiser may not have a website but nevertheless desires to advertise on the Internet. Such an advertiser can have advertisements that include the advertisers' telephone numbers served by a publisher. However, the publisher again may not be able to easily determine when a viewer calls the advertiser, and thus a less optimal billing arrangement may be required to be used, e.g., a charge for every thousand impressions that is fixed regardless of the number of phone calls the advertiser actually receives in response to the advertisement.